


Who Knew?

by confessingly



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-24
Updated: 2012-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-31 16:51:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confessingly/pseuds/confessingly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You’re just as sane as I am," she tells him, and his fingers worry at his scar, the prickling, the dim pain, and he thinks she might be right.</p><p>Nine pieces of Harry/Luna headcanon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Knew?

  1. She isn’t attractive, not with that stringy, yarnlike hair spilling everywhere and the way her eyes always seem a bit cross-eyed, and that funny, breathy way she has of speaking. When she laughs, she sounds mad, hysterical. But this is what catches him off-guard: she knows all this, and doesn’t care one bit.  _You’re just as sane as I am_ , she tells him, and his fingers worry at his scar, the prickling, the dim pain, and he thinks she might be right.
  2. Harry is a brilliant leader—he just doesn’t know it. She watches him lead the DA, watches Cho watch him, watches, because people are just so fascinating if you only allow them to work themselves out. And Harry is more interesting than most, his clear green eyes clouding over when he thinks no one’s watching, the pride in his spine every time one of them masters a new spell; the way he looks at her, at Ron, at every single member of their band of fighters, as if he wants to memorize them, this, the pleasure of being among friends. She thinks he might understand what it’s like to be on the outside, which is strange, given that he is the center. Of Hogwarts, and very possibly the entire universe.
  3. Sirius is gone, gone, gone, the finality of it echoing through him, and Nick’s words torment him far worse than his scar ever has. Sirius would not just leave him. Sirius would not—and then Luna is there, strange and mad and quiet. She doesn’t try to be there like Hermione and Ron, who love him, he knows, but who are afraid of the dark gaps in him. She is there and says what needs to be said, that he’ll see Sirius in the end, and strange, perhaps, is the wrong word for it, because Luna really is—well,  _herself_  might be the best way to put it. When she puts her pale, thin hand in his, it’s cold, but for that single moment he isn’t thinking about the prophecy, or Sirius, or his friends’ screams of pain—just the calluses and burns on her hand pressed up against the thin, white scars on the back of his.
  4. Ginny is a Weasley, after all, and Harry is an orphan. It only makes sense. She isn’t upset. She doesn’t spend her nights wandering through the moonlit corridors or glaring bitterly at them by the lake. A war is in the stars, Firenze tells her, the rhythm of human existence moving towards the crest of a great conflict, and she can see it in her mind’s eye, heliopaths leading blazing battalions into the heart of Hogwarts. Ginny can’t bear to be out of the action and Harry is the action, and now, in this span of calm, they deserve something that makes sense. Still, every time another pair of shoes goes missing, she thinks of him, and allows herself a brief moment to remember the ridges of his scars in her hand, how easy it was to do precisely the right thing without conscious effort.
  5. Ron falls asleep before him on their last night at Hogwarts, and Harry wanders through the halls because he doubts he’ll ever do it again. Somehow he winds up on the Astronomy Tower, and Luna’s there, and he doesn’t question it. Of course she’s there.  _Harry_ , she says, and she’s looking at the place where Dumbledore’s body had lain, broken,  _I wonder if it hurts to die_. He can’t look over the edge with her, can’t do it,  _I don’t know_ , he manages, throat dry.  _I’ve never thought about it. Dying_. Her hair is bathed in the light from the moon, her skin glowing, translucent, pearly. She turns to him and her eyes are wide orbs and her hair is falling over her shoulders in great golden waves as she sits down, guides him to the stone floor with a cold hand.  _I’m sorry. I should have realized you wouldn’t want to look_.
  6. She sits with him until dawn. Sometimes they talk—about the Veil, about Dumbledore, about her Quidditch commentary—and sometimes they’re silent. When they get to their feet to leave she kisses him on the cheek, so lightly she’s not even sure she did it, and he doesn’t seem quite sure it’s happened either, blinking against the cool orange of the morning, green eyes a little bit confused. A moment’s silence, and then he says,  _I’m not coming back to Hogwarts next year_. As if he needed to tell her. She holds his hand all the way down the stairs, and when they part, his hand lingers. She likes how warm he is. She thinks,  _it might be good to have that around_ , before she remembers she won’t. She shakes her head to clear it of the nargles.
  7. He’s supposed to get back together with Ginny, and he even tries, makes tentative steps, but she turns away. She stands taller now, bolder; she won’t settle for third place in his heart. No self-respecting woman ever would. Or so Hermione tells him, after a quiet birthday dinner later in the summer. He thinks he may need to sort out his priorities, but he wakes up some nights and still thinks he’s in the tent and runs out into the hallway to find Ron and Hermione there, with the same nightmare, waiting for him, and he’s not sure if what they have shared can ever be equaled. When Luna comes to visit, he thinks of the way her lips ghosted across his cheek and her cold hands and the shine of her hair, and tries to find that in the still-emaciated girl in the Burrow’s kitchen. She is so much older now, especially in the eyes; they have all aged, he supposes.  _Mad, beautiful Luna_ , he thinks, and wonders when the second adjective had arrived.
  8. She tells Harry about Dumbledore’s Army, filling in the bits Neville hadn’t wanted to relive, and he shudders at it, curses himself for abandoning her, and she tells him the truth, which was that it couldn’t be helped and they all missed him terribly. He looks at her with wonderment.  _Luna_ , he says, and she likes how he says it, reverentially,  _I don’t think I understand you at all_. To which she replies, truthfully, again,  _Of course you do_. And he is silent, because of course he does. He’s always understood.
  9. The day he begins Auror Training, she meets him for dinner. She’s wearing robes clearly cut from drapery of some kind, possibly something of Muriel’s, and everyone in the restaurant stares at her. He can’t stop smiling. He knows he shouldn’t bother dropping her off at her flat, because she’s perfectly capable of going home on her own and anyways Hermione is leaving for Hogwarts the next day and he’s promised to spend time with her, but Luna is detailing her adventures in pursuit of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack and it’s actually interesting, mostly because of the way her eyes light up when she talks about these exotic creatures and how her radish earrings swing and occasionally get tangled up in her hair. She opens the door of her apartment; turns back and says _,_ quite, seriously,  _if you learn anything about the Rotfang Conspiracy, will you promise to do your best to end it_? He laughs and draws close without really thinking about it and she’s looking up at him like she knows—she does know, she’s always known—and he says,  _I must be crazy_ , because this is Luna, mad, mad Luna, who believes in nargles and wrackspurts, but she just says, simply,  _you’re just as sane as I am_. He kisses her—and it’s dizzying, Luna,  _who knew—_ he kisses her and thinks, once again, that she might be right.




End file.
